Electric cable is generally manufactured in very long lengths that are wound on a drum or reel for sale and/or transportation. For practical use, a length of electric cable is cut off the end of the electric cable that is wound on the drum and often another operation is performed at one or both ends of the cut-off length of cable. For high volume production in a factory, individual lengths of electric cable are processed in various ways in machines and processes that all involve paying off a length of electric cable from a drum or reel and cutting off the length of the paid-off cable for further processing. Further processing, such as stripping one or both ends of the cable, attaching a cable seal at one or both ends of the cable, and/or attaching a terminal at one or both ends of the cable, is generally referred to as terminating. Stripping, applying seals and applying terminals are only some of the many processing steps that can also be included in the terminating process.
The known machines and processes are generally of three types, a swing arm type, a transport arm type and a combination of a swing arm and a transport arm type. These known machines and processes comprise two segments, a feeding segment and a terminating segment with cutting off a length of paid off cable being the link between the two segments.
A problem with the known machines and processes of the above types is that the operation of the two segments are sequentially linked, so that one segment must wait to start its processing until the other segment has completed its operation. Consequently, one of the segments is idle a significant amount of time.
In such machines and processes, the cycle time that it takes from a finished electric cable to the next is the sum of the time each segment of the machine or process requires to process each part. Particularly the feeding time is directly proportional to the length of cable being processed, so that the problem increases with the length of electric cable that is to be paid off the reel.